Review: World After (Penryn and the End of Days #2)

In this sequel to the bestselling fantasy thriller, Angelfall, the survivors of the angel apocalypse begin to scrape back together what’s left of the modern world.

When a group of people capture Penryn’s sister Paige, thinking she’s a monster, the situation ends in a massacre. Paige disappears. Humans are terrified. Mom is heartbroken.

Penryn drives through the streets of San Francisco looking for Paige. Why are the streets so empty? Where is everybody? Her search leads her into the heart of the angels’ secret plans where she catches a glimpse of their motivations, and learns the horrifying extent to which the angels are willing to go.

Meanwhile, Raffe hunts for his wings. Without them, he can’t rejoin the angels, can’t take his rightful place as one of their leaders. When faced with recapturing his wings or helping Penryn survive, which will he choose?

*I suggest reading Angelfall before reading this review, as there may be spoilers*

I have been waiting for this book to be released since reading Angelfall last summer, and I was really excited by the time I got the chance to read World After. Just from the cover it looked awesome, especially the bat wings, and the story sounded great too. And the story certainly did turn out to be great. I’m not sure it captured my imagination quite like the first book did, but I did still enjoy it a lot. There were some small things that tended to annoy me a lot though.

The story follows Penryn and her family after the aerie attack and Raffe has flown away with his bat wings. Penryn’s life isn’t great at this point – most of the rebellion group aren’t fans of her family seeing as her mother is kind of crazy, her sister looks like a creepy monster and Penryn herself seems to have come back from the dead. The plot starts straight off in the book with the discovery that Penryn is alive, and it doesn’t stop for a moment after that. Honestly, the story is so fast-moving, and there were a lot of parts that I was a huge fan of, such as the sword and the way it gives memories to Penryn.

On the other hand, there were some things that annoyed me all the time through out the book. I’m not a fan of the writing style in this book and I noticed it more in World After than I did in Angelfall. There’s something about that seems a bit blunt I think, but I can’t say for certain what it is I dislike so much about it. It is possible that one thing I dislike about it is that Penryn does a lot of stating the obvious. Also, the capitalization of terms (World Before and World After) really got to me as I got closer to the end of the book. It was absolutely pointless and just looked a bit messy.

There were a lot of good points about the book – a lot of the scenes were great to read such as Penryn and Raffe’s reunion, and also the video scene. The characters themselves are also a lot of fun to read about. Penryn herself is a very strong character who is ready to do anything for her family and she always tries not to let them down, especially her sister. I like the fact that she’ll stand up for herself in any situation and is ready to lead other people if they need help doing something. I’m also a little bit in love with Raffe, just because he can be so adorable sometimes. He’s a really sweet character who will also stand up for the people he loves, and is ready to sacrifice the things most important to him. I feel Dee-Dum should get a mention too, just because they’re easily the best characters to read about.

Overall, the book wasn’t as good as the first one in the series, but it was certainly worth the read.